Near-Infrared Spectroscopy Combined with Absorbance Upper Optimization Partial Least Squares Applied to Rapid Analysis of Polysaccharide for Proprietary Chinese Medicine Oral Solution

Abstract

Near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy was applied to reagent-free quantitative analysis of polysaccharide of a brand product of proprietary Chinese medicine (PCM) oral solution samples. A novel method, called absorbance upper optimization partial least squares (AUO-PLS), was proposed and successfully applied to the wavelength selection. Based on varied partitioning of the calibration and prediction sample sets, the parameter optimization was performed to achieve stability. On the basis of the AUO-PLS method, the selected upper bound of appropriate absorbance was 1.53 and the corresponding wavebands combination was 400 - 1880 & 2088 - 2346 nm. With the use of random validation samples excluded from the modeling process, the root-mean-square error and correlation coefficient of prediction for polysaccharide were 27.09 mg·L - 1 and 0.888, respectively. The results indicate that the NIR prediction values are close to those of the measured values. NIR spectroscopy combined with AUO-PLS method provided a promising tool for quantification of the polysaccharide for PCM oral solution and this technique is rapid and simple when compared with conventional methods.